Sonnets and Songs

Helen Hay Whitney

Sonnets and Songs

SONNETS

IAve atque ValeAs a blown leaf across the face of TimeYour name falls emptily upon my heart.In this new symmetry you have no part,No lot in my fair life. The stars still chimeAutumn and Spring in ceaseless pantomime.I play with Beauty, which is kin to Art,Forgetting Nature. Nor do pulses startTo hear your soul remembered in a rhyme.You may not vex me any more. The starkTerror of life has passed, and all the stress.Winds had their will of me, and now caress,Blown from bland groves I know. Time dreams, and I,As on a mirror, see the days go byIn nonchalant procession to the dark.II“Chaque baiser vaut un roman.”I, living love and laughter, have forgotThe way the heart has uttered melody.As sobbing, plaintive cadence of the seaA poet’s soul should rest, remembering notThe inland paths of green, the flowers, the spotWhere fairies ring. In hermit ecstasyMusic is born, and gay or wofullyLovers of Poesy share her lonely lot.For you and me, Beloved, crowned with Spring,Catching Love’s flowers from off the lap of Time,What are the songs my voice has scorned to sing?Ghostly they hover round my heart-wise lips;Into a kiss I fold my rose of Rhyme,Laid like a martyr on your finger-tips.IIIAs a Pale ChildAs a pale child, hemmed in by windy rain,Patiently turns to touch his well-known toys,Playing as children play who make no noise,Yet happy in a way; then sighs again,To watch the world across the storm-dim pane,And sees with wistful eyes glad girls and boysWho romp beneath the rain’s unlicensed joys,And feels wild longings sweep his gentle brain.So I, contented with my flowers for stars,Stroll in my fair, walled garden happily,Knowing no gladder game till, shrill and sweet,I hear life’s cry ring down the silent street,And press my face against the sunlit barsTo watch the joyous spirits who are free.IVFlower of the CloveAh, Love, have pity!—I am but a child;I ask but light and laughter, and the tearsDarken the sunlight of my fairest years.By love made desolate, by love beguiled,I waste the Spring. Love’s harvest wains are piledWith poppies and gold grain—I glean but fearsOf empty hands, grim hunger, and the jeersOf happy wives whose loves are reconciled.But mine! Ah, mine is like a tattered leafUpon a turbid stream. I have no pride,No life, but love, which is a bitter grief.As a lost star I wander down your sky.Give me your heart. Open it wide—so wide!I must have love and laughter, or I die.VToo LateUpon your stone the wine of my desireIs spilled. Your poppy lips have grown too paleFrom fasting. Your white hands will not availThe cold eyes of your heart to light the fire.I did not think my prayers could ever tire.Now, like doomed ships, they flutter without sail.Lost in a calm which held no rock, no gale—Now, when your chilly smile bids me aspire!So, without history, my soul is slain—Woman of barren love; the wine was red—Beautiful for your spending. Not againWill the bud blossom where the frost has sped.Timid, you dared not hark when angels sang.All, all is lost, without one saving pang.VIThe Supreme SacrificeBetter than life, better than sea and morn,And all the sun-stained fragments of the day—Ah! more than breeze, than purple clouds that strayAcross dim twilights—I, the tempest-torn,Fighting the stars for glory, who must scornHeart-drops bespread along love’s cruel wayLike scattered petals on the breast of May—Better than life I love you, I forlorn.Better than death—the sleeping and the peaceWhen warm within the breast of brooding EarthMy weary heart should give its woes release,The pitiful dark remembering not my loss,The calm, wise years restoring joy for dearth—Better than death, my love, my burning cross.VIIMaluaOut of the purple treasuries of nightCame the dark wind of evening silver-starred—Stirred on his cheek. The forest keeping wardBreathed with a tremulous silence, and the bright,Bare moon crowned his adoring brow with light.The exquisite dream of beauty held him hardIn a great love, a forest love, unmarred—Still unprofaned—by human nature’s sight.Guarding the temple gates of peace he stood,Statue of bronze with pagan heart of stone.Sudden, a dazzling glory lit the wood—Moon in his soul that dimmed the moon above.Life was revealed, a Spring-sweet maid, alone—Beauty was woman, and the woman—Love.VIIILove’s LegacyAs one who looks too long upon the sunWhen he must turn to earth from flame-shot skiesSees all else dark through his bereaved eyes,And yet may watch the rainbow ribbons runAthwart the gravity of gray and dun,He holds the darkness dearer for the prizeWherein his only pledge of radiance liesWhen he the vast magnificence must shun.So we who play with rainbows, having seenThe sun’s own face. We may not hold the west,Which burns against the bosom of the night,But in the after-glow, with eyes serene,We still may find, dear heart, the sun’s bequest,An echoed glory of our passionate light.IXHow we would Live!How we would live! We’d drink the years like wine,With all to-morrows hid behind the veil,Which is your hair; between two lilies pale—Your slender hands—my heart should lie and shine,A crimson rose. We’d catch the wind and twineThe evening stars—a chaplet musical—To crown our folly, lure the nightingaleTo sing the bliss your lips should teach to mine.And if the sage, declaring life is vain,Should frown upon the flower of all our daysAnd chide the sun that knows no tears of rain,He should not tease our heart with cynic eye—The soul’s vast altar stands beyond his gazeWhen two have lived—then shall they fear to die?XIn ExtremisNay, touch me not, nor even with your eyesHold mine, for I would speak you, thus afar,Aloof and chill and lonely as a star.The hands that urge, the hungry heart that cries,Have wrapped my love with love’s elusive lies;The lips that burn have laid a ruddy scarAgainst the truth that stands without the bar,And blinded faith with passion’s mysteries.Night holds a single moon, day one desire—Her golden sun; and life a love supreme,Wherein one moment poises, crowned with fire,White with the naked truth. Beyond control,’Tis here, my Sun, in love’s last hour extreme,I hold aloft my bare, adoring soul.XIThe ForgivenessIf I might see you dead, Beloved—dead—Your false eyes closed forever to the light,Your false smile stilled upon my aching sight;If I might know that nevermore your head,Cruelly fair, could lie upon the bedOf my torn heart; if I beheld the nightFree from your living thought—ah! if I might,Then could my desolate soul be comforted.For this is worst of all the woes you gave—My heart may not forgive. The tired years goAnd leave the great love weeping for a grave,Scorned and unburied, ’neath the open sky.I could not love you less, to see you so.Loving you more, I might forgive—and die.XIIWith MusicDear, did we meet in some dim yesterday?I half remember how the birds were muteAmong green leaves and tulip-tinted fruit,And on the grass, beside a stream, we layIn early twilight; faintly, far away,Came lovely sounds adrift from silver lute,With answered echoes of an airy flute,While Twilight waited tiptoe, fain to stay.Her violet eyes were sweet with mystery.You looked in mine, the music rose and fellLike little, lisping laughter of the sea;Our souls were barks, wind-wafted from the shore—Gold cup, a rose, a ruby, who can tell?Soft—music ceases—I recall no more.XIIIAlpha and OmegaI died to-day, and yet upon my eyesA glamour of the gorgeous summer greenStill wavers, and my brain has kept a keen,Sweet bird-song. Glad with light, the summer skiesAre sapphire, and a purple shadow liesAcross the hills—no change is on the sceneSince happy yesterday. Ah! can it meanThe body lives when stricken spirit dies?The blow has fallen, yet I can recallThe first of days when this dead heart drew breath—A wondrous moon-flower waking of a heart.Strange—then as now the moment seemed to partBody from soul, so like are birth and death;So did I gain, and so I lost my all.XIVFlowers of IceThe lights within the ice-floes are our flowers,Lily and daffodil and violet.Beneath these monstrous suns that never setTremble soft rainbows, young as Earth’s first hours,Ancient as Time. No balm of gentle showersMake for their growth; for them, gigantic, metThe immemorial ice and sun, to getSuch blossoms—pledge of Beauty’s bravest powers.Violet and pale grass-green, the Spring-time diesIn the soft South. To us, in this grim world,Daring with frozen heart and tearless eyesThe North’s white sanctity, Fate idly throwsThese alms—a deathless Spring of ice enfurled,And over all, far flung, the sunset rose.XVLove and DeathI can believe that my Beloved dies,That all her virtue, all her youth shall fail,And life, her rosy life, grow cold and pale,To bloom again in braver Paradise.I must believe that death shall close her eyes,And hold her heart beyond a heavy veil,Where silences surround her spirit frailAnd waste the form where all my loving lies.Ah, God! but no. And is my love so weak?Her heart may pause, may falter and grow still,But not her laugh, the color in her cheek—That may not fade; the catch that lifts her breath,Sobbing against my heart. Essay your will—These are too dear to fill your grave, O Death!XVIThe MessageWhen one has heard the message of the Rose,For what faint other calling shall he care?Dark broodings turn to find their lonely lair;The vain world keeps her posturing and pose.He, with his crimson secret, which bestowsHeaven on his heart, to Heaven lifts his prayer,And knows all glory trembling through the airAs on triumphal journeying he goes.So through green woodlands in the twilight dim,

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